CAN BRICS PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE?
- to the US global hegemony, of course. Even after the end of the Cold War, the US has
not moderated but all the more escalated its expansionist and resource-grabbing
policies and is strutting like the only superpower gobbling up millions of
people as its meat. In this context the coming together of four big countries
of the world, Brazil, Russia, China and India into an alliance, joined by South
Africa later, to become the BRICS entity, is a welcome development. Certainly
the US monopoly of and hegemony on world trade, economics and politics needs to
be broken up for the welfare of humanity at large and for the protection and
promotion of the sovereignty and independence of the various countries in the
world. To quote Abhijit Das, “Since 2001, when Goldman Sachs coined the term
“BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the acronym has come into widespread use and potentially
marks a shift in global economic power away from the developed G7 economies
towards the developing world. …BRIC countries … developing rapidly and by 2050
their combined GDP could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest
countries of the world. These four countries … account for more than a quarter
of the world’s land area, 40% of the world’s population, and have a combined
GDP (PPP) of US$ 20.39 trillion in 2011. … The BRIC countries have been engaged
with one another to enhance cooperation in various economic and financial
areas. The bloc has been enlarged as South Africa
joined the group during the BRICS Summit held in
Sanya, China in April 2011.” It is also exhilarating to know that a conference of IT ministers and
teams of BRICS countries has taken place last October to discuss the ways and
means to de-monopolize the Internet too, now in the clutches of the US
government and multinationals, and not infrequently misused, and at any time
can even be access-blocked for their ‘enemy countries’ etc. at their whim and
fancy. As the Russian IT Minister disclosed, “we really require some kind of diversification
of the IT solutions – we need joint efforts by all BRICS nations, because we
represent just about half of the population of the planet…. we really want it
to be balanced, not to depend on one country or several companies. We really
want fair competition … But also we’re concerned … with such issues as the
management, the governance of the critical internet infrastructure. It’s also …
an issue of monopolization. …today it’s still under a particular government
contract between the government of the US and a legal entity ... called
ICANN … assigning domain names, internet addresses. But, still, it’s a legal
entity under the US law.” The recent BRICS summit held under Indian
chair in Goa is a refreshing breeze with all the five participating countries unanimously
consenting to exert their abilities to counter international terrorism, though
there were objections to the naming of any particular country as the ‘mother-ship
of terrorism’, and also concluding several mutually beneficial economic and
political pacts. §§§
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